The emptiness of New Year’s resolutions

RichThinking Times Issue 3

Hi and welcome to 2009!

Well, originally I was going to be in touch with you well before now, suggesting you review the old year, set goals for the coming year, and generally focus on how to bring more riches and rich thoughts into your life in 2009. However, as I said in a short blog a few days ago:

How do you make God laugh? Tell him your plans!

Well, he/she must have been having a good laugh, because the day after Christmas I was stricken with flu and today is the first day really that I’ve felt well enough to do anything. So here’s a shortened version of my plans, maybe they’re better than the old set!

May you and your family have a truly rich year; may you be blessed with what you want, and may you find fulfilment in all that you do.

Jane

Contents:

1. RichThought for January

I am unique. What I offer is unique. I recognise my particular skills and attributes, and people love working with me for these. I am a RichThinker!

Read this out to yourself. Put your own name in, as in “I, Jane, am unique”. Notice how you feel about it, and say it to yourself particularly when you think it’s not true. Be willing to accept the truth of it instead.

2. Article: The Emptiness of New Year’s Resolutions

I wonder why it is that so often New Year’s Resolutions are set and then not achieved? The failure rate of achieving them is spectacularly high, unlike other types of goal setting. Why is this?

Well, resolutions are really just another word for goals, but they’re not treated with the same kind of respect that goals are given. Perhaps this is because resolutions belong in the personal world, not the business world, and it’s unlikely that you’ll be held accountable for your resolutions not being achieved. But it’s a mark of disrespect to yourself if you don’t treat making resolutions seriously. It’s better to not make any, than to make them, give up on them and feel a failure. Who wants to start a new year with that?

Secondly, setting and achieving a New Year Resolution, like any other goal, actually requires a process of change to make it happen. This is where RichThinking comes in. Without a willingness to enter into and go through the changes that have to occur when you want to get from where you are to another place, then as soon as you hit a challenge on the road, you’ll stop. So you must be willing to adapt to changes that will happen – and if you’re not willing, don’t set yourself a resolution. Simple.

Thirdly, my take on this is informed by many years of having a successful counselling and psychotherapy practice, where clients would regularly be admitting to me their dreadful secret: they hated Christmas, didn’t want to go ‘home’, and secretly wished the whole thing would go to pot!

But off they would go, grin and bear it, and then emerge into January with all sorts of good intentions, perhaps borne out of relief that they’d survived another Christmas. New Year Resolutions made in this context are likely not to work, simply because they’re built on the false premise of a reaction, rather than a clear desire to have something different happen in their lives.

So this year do yourself a favour. I’d like to invite you to set at least one New Year Resolution, or goal, about your business and to take it very seriously. That means it’s important to know what you want. I write at length about this in my manual How To Be A RichThinker, (click for more info) because without knowing what you want, it’s very difficult to achieve it. So if you don’t know what you want business-wise, then maybe your goal will be to discover that. If you do know what you want, then write it down and stick it up somewhere you can easily see it. You don’t need to know how you are going to achieve it; you just need to know that’s where you’re going. And did you know you are 75% more likely to achieve your goal if you set one in the first place, and write it down, than if you don’t bother? Lots of studies have been done to support this, so I encourage you to do this if you haven’t done so already.

If you like this article, you can reprint it or send it on to a friend so long as you include the following resource box:

Jane Rogers shows you how to use the inner & outer tools of success to develop your coaching, therapy or other solo professional business. Want to learn about the 7 Biggest Business Mistakes made in this market? Sign up for her free report here: http://www.richthinkers.co.uk/therapistsarea.html